The Warriors shot the lights out in Denver to steal Game 2 from the Nuggets, and home court advantage in the best of seven first round series right along with it.

In Game 3 at Oracle Arena on Friday, Golden State didn’t need an otherworldly performance to seal the victory; they only needed the Nuggets to implode.

Denver gave back all of a 13-point third quarter lead, and squandered the chances the Warriors gave them late. As a result, Golden State came away with the 110-108 victory to take a two games to one lead in the series.

This wasn’t one of the best played games of the playoffs, but it certainly was one of the more exciting. Credit the atmosphere in Oakland, and credit the willingness of both teams to play an uptempo style that’s almost oblivious to shifts in momentum and what the actual score and situation was at any given point throughout the night.

Defense wasn’t exactly stressed by either team, which led to plenty of easy looks at the rim, as well as from beyond the three-point arc.

Ty Lawson pushed the tempo for the Nuggets, and led his team with 35 points and 10 assists — just a monster effort in keeping Denver in the driver’s seat for most of this game. Corey Brewer, Andre Iguodala, and Kenneth Faried were all effective too, while Andre Miller struggled to get going, and finished just 2-13 from the field with four assists against three turnovers in 27 minutes off the bench.

Miller’s ‘old man game’ can be plenty effective in certain situations, and it was the main reason that the Nuggets escaped with the Game 1 victory in this series. But it had no place on this night, in what was an up-and-down affair that rewarded tempo and athleticism above all else.

The fourth quarter was pure mayhem, and both teams made their fair share of mistakes down the stretch that could have cost them the game.

A free throw from Jarrett Jack put the Warriors up four with 22 seconds to play. It was a two-possession lead that should have been enough given the time remaining on the clock. But in a game with hardly any strong defensive play, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that Denver was able to get a wide open look at a corner three from Wilson Chandler that cut the lead to one with 16 seconds remaining.

Here’s where it got crazy: After a timeout, the Warriors were inbounding the ball at center court with nine seconds remaining while clinging to that one-point lead. Jack was the passer, but as no one could free themselves to receive the pass, he waited too long to call the timeout, so the referee blew the whistle on the rare five second call, giving possession back to the Nuggets.

On the ensuing possession, Lawson, while guarded closely by Festus Ezeli, dribbled the ball out of bounds, turning it back over to the Warriors with just five seconds remaining. Denver fouled to send Harrison Barnes to the free throw line, where he made one of two to put the Warriors back up two with three seconds left.

Iguodala launched a prayer from beyond half court as time expired that hit the front of the rim, but ultimately wasn’t answered.

Stephen Curry led the Warriors with 29 points and 11 assists, and Jack finished with 23 points, but with as many assists (7) as turnovers.

The Nuggets can’t afford to get into another track meet with the Warriors in Game 4, especially not at Oracle Arena where Golden State’s home court advantage in the playoffs seems to be every bit as formidable as the one that Denver enjoyed during the regular season.

To escape with the series tied at two games apiece, the Nuggets are going to have to be much smarter with their possessions, and play at least some measure of defense to limit the Warriors offensively. Either way, Game 4 of this series is a must-watch.

DeMar DeRozan is having one of those seasons for the No. 2 team in the Eastern Conference, the Toronto Raptors. During Thursday night’s win over the Minnesota Timberwolves, 124-110, DeRozan scored 27 points while adding eight rebounds, five assists, and shooting a whopping 13 free throws.

DeRozan also sealed the victory in the final minute with a huge put back dunk.

The Raptors led by 9 points with a minute left as they were inbounding the ball. A long pass from the baseline to a streaking DeMarre Carroll resulted in a blocked layup, but DeRozan was there to clean up the mess.

Here’s what you missed Thursday around the NBA while you were drinking homemade glow-in-the-dark beer with jellyfish genes in it (no, you try it first, I insist)…
1) Don’t play Memphis in a close game, they just find a way to win. Last week, when Mike Conley went down with a back injury and was going to miss six weeks (give or take), we questioned if Memphis could keep their heads above water. They promptly went out and lost to a very good Toronto team.

Since then they have won five in a row, capped by an impressive 88-86 win over Portland Tuesday. Impressive because:

• Memphis is now 12-0 in games that were within 3 points in the final minute. You get in a close game with Memphis, you lose. (Statistically, we know some of that is luck, that there will be some regression to the mean, but that stat has propelled a team has been outscored by nine points this season, one that should be 12-12, to the 16-8 record they have.)

• Memphis trailed Portland 79-68 with less than five minutes to go, and still won.

• Marc Gasol had 36 points and has been an absolute beast since Conley went down, doing whatever it takes to win.

• Toney Douglas — a guy the Grizzlies just picked up off the street this week, basically — comes in and is clutch down the stretch for them, including hitting the game-winning free throws with 0.5 seconds left (Damian Lillard tried to argue the call, to no avail).

The schedule gets tough for Memphis the next couple of weeks — Golden State, home-and-home with Cleveland, then Boston and Utah looming not long after — but do not doubt the Grizzlies. No team is as resilient as this bunch.

2) Bulls prove Spurs aren’t perfect on the road. It was bound to happen, the San Antonio Spurs were 13-0 on the road, they were going to stumble at some point. That point turned out to be Thursday night in Chicago, where the Spurs came out of the gate like they went out and had a big pregame meal of Lou Malnati’s pizza — 32 points on 30.6 percent shooting in the first half for San Antonio. The Spurs didn’t defend poorly, for example Kawhi Leonard held Jimmy Butler to no first-half points — in fact, midway through the first quarter Taj Gibson and Robin Lopez had scored almost all the Bulls’ buckets — but the San Antonio offense was dreadful. Throw a little credit to the Chicago defense if you want, but this was more San Antonio stumbling than a Chicago return to the Thibodeau era.

The Bulls were up 12 at the half and were able to hang on despite a strong second 24 minutes from Leonard (17 of his 24 came in the second half) and get the win. Dwyane Wade had 20 points and hit a couple of key buckets late to stabilize Chicago. For a Bulls team that is going to be in a playoff battle all season — they are the seven seed right now, one game ahead of the Pacers in ninth — these kinds of wins at home can prove huge.

3) What is it with Minnesota and second half? On the road, the Minnesota Timberwolves had played the Toronto Raptors even for the first 24 minutes — it was 59-59 at the half. And yet, there was a sense of dread for Timberwolves fans because all season their young team has just come apart in the third quarter — and then Toronto opened the second half on an 11-2 run. Minnesota, to their credit, crawls back into it, but midway through the fourth the Raptors go on a 17-4 run sparked by Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan, and the Raptors pull away for the 124-110 win. The Timberwolves lost another game because they can’t defend well.

Minnesota shows flashes of the kind of brilliance that has everyone thinking they might be a contender in a few years. But we all expected too much too soon from this group. Those impressive stretches are followed by ones where they play like a young team, they don’t defend well, and they throw those good efforts away. Not that they were going to beat a good Toronto team on the road, but the Timberwolves can be frustrating to watch. Patience is hard, and Minnesota fans are being asked to show a lot of it. We can debate if it’s time to bring Ricky Rubio off the bench and let Kris Dunn sink or swim, but that’s not the core problem. Ultimately, the Timberwolves are young and playing like it. They don’t know how and aren’t putting in the effort to defend well yet. Karl-Anthony Towns, Andrew Wiggins, Zach LaVine, they can be the core of a contender eventually, but there is a lot of learning to do along the way. Tom Thibodeau can teach them. But it’s going to require patience.